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This morning's Chicago Tribune ran an interesting articled titled: "Employee swap gives software firms new perspectives." Here's a key excerpt.

"8th Light and fellow software firm Obtiva, based in Chicago, conducted the Craftsman Swap, a five-day exchange in which one senior consultant from each firm joined the other company."

A bit of background will help. A Craftsman Swap is part of a larger movement called Software Craftsmanship. It stands for quality software development using agile methodologies and (I love this part) an Apprenticeship Approach to training software developers.

Given the competitive nature of the field and the fact that "intellectual property" is no mere buzzphrase in the software development industry, you can bet that lots of negotiation and attorneys were involved in making this happen. The article outlines those well.

To go through that effort, the two firms needed to be convinced of the value of the exchange. And the potential big value comes from the fact that the big, revolutionary ideas often come from outside.

Whether you're talking about a company or an industry, the ideas from inside are usually "best practice" ideas. They're good and they're helpful and they improve things, but they often don't create any breakthroughs or stepwise improvements.

The ideas that do that come from outside. That's outside the company or industry. That's why you go to trade shows. That's why you talk to your suppliers and your customers and your competitors. They can come from somewhere else, too.

Some of those breakthrough ideas might come from the outsiders in your midst. They're the folks who don't quite fit with everyone else. They've sometimes got "odd" things to say and they always seem to see things differently from the rest of the group.

Pay attention to those "Insider Outsiders." Their ideas can have special power because they know you and your processes, but see them differently from everyone else.

Boss's Bottom Line

The people on your team who see things differently may hold the key to dramatic improvement. You have to be open to considering their ideas along with the ideas of everyone else.

Wally's Working Supervisor's Support Kit is a collection of information and tools to help working supervisors do a better job. It's based on what Wally's learned in over twenty years of supervisory skills training. Click here to check it out.